bRIT’S wINE Ios App

Overview

The team met Brit, the founder of Brit’s Wine, during the initial consultation. She had released the iOS app a couple of months before our consultation and wanted us to conduct user testing and recommend data driven solutions to improve usability. Brit mentioned one of the most important aspects of her app was having the ability to share her knowledge as a sommelier with customers who may otherwise feel overwhelmed or intimidated by the number of choices available.

She also requested new additions to the app:

Onboarding to gain better insight into user taste profiles.

"Somm Select" card that randomly appears as one of the wine cards while swiping through. These cards highlighted particular wines to create excitement and encourage a purchase.

Role

I worked with 4 other designers, and we were all involved in all parts of the user-centered design process for 7-weeks. I was the lead designer for the app’s Discovery view which incorporated the swiping interaction for users to indicate that they like or dislike wines based on their personal preferences.

Competitive/Comparative Analysis

My team and I assessed competitive and comparative and evaluated the overall user experience in the following areas:

Sign in/Create a new account

Navigation

Onboarding

Search

Discovery of new wines

The team also reviewed comparative apps, such as Tinder, Hotel Tonight, Airbnb, etc to understand how they addressed similar task flows to discovery and matching features.

Pain Point Synthesis

After conducting usability testing of the current app and user interviews, the team analyzed and synthesized test results with sticky notes.

Then we first compiled a list of all the pain points from each user and grouped similar pain points together into themes. This helped us visualize patterns and identify which opportunities for improvement should be prioritized.

Key Insights for Discovery

7/7 users had difficulty understanding the difference between 'Try' and 'Like.' Swiping down to 'Try' meant that the user wanted to purchase the wine, whereas swiping right to 'Like' a wine added the wine to the user’s 'Matches' list.

0/7 users understood what happened after they passed, liked, or tried a wine. They expected feedback from their previous action.

6/7 users wanted to see wines of a certain price range in “Discovery.”

After price being the main driving factor to purchasing a new wine, the wine’s bottle label falls in second. 4/7 users weren’t able to make an informed decision if neither were clearly shown.

5/7 users found descriptions too long and difficult to understand because of the intimidating wine vocabulary. Scannability was important to them.

Persona Development

After reviewing research insights, we created personas based on feedback. Meet one of our personas, Bill.

Concept Development

After we reviewed the structure and design stories, Brit and the design team participated in a design studio exercise (borrowed from the Google Ventures team) called "Crazy Eights." We generated multiple ideas for layout and focused on requirements needed for each screen.

Lo-fi Prototype Validation

We turned our UI sketches into wireframes, then conducted a round of testing to validate design decisions.

Visual Design development

The UI of the existing app lacked visual hierarchy, rhythm and language. It was limited to using 3 colors and a lot of white space. The team produced a style tile that would be the foundation of our style guide and included the following elements:

Color palette

Typography

Icon styling

A sample hi-fi mock up for that represented our ideas

Once we gathered critique feedback, we produced the final style tile that created the foundation of our style guide.

HI-FI PROTOTYPE validation

The team created and revised the hi-fi prototype with the new screens and conducted rounds of usability testing with 5 participants.

After three rounds of testing hi-fi prototypes, the team delivered the final prototype to the client.

FINAL discovery SCREENS

Final changes made to the Discovery screens:

Changed label from ‘Try’ to ‘Buy

Users can access their shopping cart

Users can set their desired price range through filters

Price and wine label image are clearly shown

Tags are used to describe wine that wine beginners can scan.

SOMM Select card shows sommelier recommended wines

Final Notes

Beginning and well-versed wine enthusiasts can learn about wine with this app redesign. The team and I were able to focus on the main goals based on the initial scope:

Users can get sommelier recommendations based on taste profile

Users can get a glimpse of what wine bottle looks like

Users can access information that beginners can understand before making a decision

Users can keep track of wines they previously purchased, liked, and disliked